Community Volunteer Ambassadors: National Early Service Training Held at Blue Ridge Parkway

Community Volunteer Ambassadors at a Visitor Center in Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Community Volunteer Ambassadors (CVAs) from the February 2023 cohort participated in National Early Service Training at Blueridge Parkway in Asheville, North Carolina, from April 3 to April 7. The CVAs interacted with their fellow members as they went through robust training to prepare them for their new roles in assisting their sites Volunteers-In-Parks program by connecting with their local communities. These CVAs worked hard to learn topics like VIP program management, handbooks and local policy, NPS history and culture, leadership skills, networking, conflict management, and cultural humility.

Community Volunteer Ambassadors participated in training sessions where they focused on volunteer event planning and outreach.

The CVAs also presented their Early Service Training projects, which they used to learn about their national park site and identify potential needs that could be met by the volunteer program or potential opportunities for improvement in the volunteer program. These projects will be invaluable tools for the CVAs as they begin to build up their volunteer programming at their sites.

On the last day of the training, second year CVAs hosted a panel to answer questions by the first year CVAs and all CVAs participated in a "Collab Lab," to meet with sites that were similar to theirs (historic, large parks, relatively new volunteer programs, etc.). This was a space for the CVAs to bounce ideas off one another and for them to hear suggestions from sites like theirs.

A special thanks goes out to those second year CVAs who stepped into a leadership role at National Early Service Training during sessions and by welcoming the first year CVA members into the cohort by including them in social activities.

Congratulations to the February 2023 cohort of CVAs on completing their National Early Service Training and for connecting with one another so well to make the training a memorable one.

About the Community Volunteer Ambassador Program:

As a fifty-week professional internship, the Community Volunteer Ambassador Program is managed in partnership between the National Park Service Volunteers-In-Parks program and the Stewards Individual Placement Program of Conservation Legacy. Members are youth (ages 18-30 or 18-35 if veterans) from diverse backgrounds who aspire to future careers in service and conservation stewardship. In 2022, approximately 90 members will be placed in park sites throughout the country to provide capacity-building services focused on connecting communities to parks through engagement and volunteer activities.

The official logo of the Community Volunteer Ambassador program.

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